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Wednesday, 11 January 2017

Now What?

There has been
coverage in the media about the School of Oriental and African Studies; the
University of London and the choice of philosophers in their courses on
philosophy. Persons there want the "Europeans" out and others in
because in the last handful or so of generations Europe had its Empires etc.

Down the
centuries with philosophers there have been a lot of them about, wittering on about
the meaning of life and all that. Opinions vary strongly and the debates can be
bitter.

My theories
that Karl Marx was simply retreading the ideas of Morgan Kavanagh to get the
cash to pay the rent and Lenin was influenced by the views of Henry Hook VC,
attendant at the British Museum and late of Rorke's Drift have not had much
support.

Had I been in
Eastern Europe a while back and uttered these ideas it would have been off to
the Gulag sharpish to be taught the official versions. In my travels I have
encountered senior members of the Order of the Dominicans, men of Rome and you
had better believe it.

One I knew was
clear in his mind that something like philosophy should not be taught either in
schools or indeed universities. He felt strongly that it only gave people ideas
that they were better off without and it was the good of their souls, as
defined by The Dominicans, was the only thing that mattered.

The younger
generations today might be influenced more by Marvin the depressed computer
from "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" than others and it is
arguable that the mobile robot was more right than wrong, Artificial
Intelligence in practice perhaps. I wonder if the only true philosophers of our
age are the software engineers.

Of course, it
is poor Plato who gets it in the neck again. I have a soft spot for the old
boy. When a few days after leaving the Army I was asked to think about Plato by
Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990 see Wikipedia) it was much nicer than dealing with
senior NCO's and Brigadiers who disagreed with my opinions, they were not
Platonic in their view of the world.

The oddity in
complaining about Plato is the idea that he is a Euro geek bent on the
supremacy of Europe and its race or races. The archaeologists and paleontologists
today with the aid of science and extensive research are discovering that the
human story is a great deal more complicated than we have believed. In what we
thought were primitive societies things are turning up which mean extensive
contact over wide areas in trade.

So ancient
Greece, notably Athens, was not just a centre for trade but one of many meeting
places for people from far and wide and they in turn would have had other
connections. In short, someone like Plato at the time may have simply been
trying to make sense out of a flood of ideas and opinions from far afield.
Ultima Thule, (Glasgow?) at one end and perhaps China etc. at the other?

One source
would have been Ancient Egypt and going back many centuries before Plato. Imhotep was as
far from Plato as Plato is from the present day. The trading and meeting places
of southern Egypt would have extended far and wide and into deepest Africa from
a time when we have no written records of so much of the world.

Greece may now
be seen as "Europe", but this is a modern entity. Long ago it was
literally in another world of its time and place. It was a one time a major
centre and before then a part of extensive complexes of human interaction,
trade and thought, much of which is lost and forgotten apart from the few
remains that we are busy wrecking.

Is it possible
that if we knew a lot more than we think we know at the moment that Plato might
be a thinker of his time who was toying with and suggesting ideas that came to
the agora from many places which we are not aware of. It is possible that if
some were from Egypt and its vicinity then these might derive from the further
south.

That is, what
we now refer to as Africa. I wonder what Confucius would make of all this?